


Nylons and Noxzema

by dilangley



Series: get a life (you first) [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 1940s, Bedtime Routines, Cooking, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Laundry, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 20:57:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18948508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilangley/pseuds/dilangley
Summary: A glimpse into Steve and Natasha's daily life in 1945 as outlined through Steve's 5 senses[stands alone]





	Nylons and Noxzema

**Author's Note:**

> Forgive me my typos and any inadvertent historical inaccuracies. I did more fact-checking than is probably reasonable for something like this.

_Sight_

 

Men are visual, y’know?

Steve had never really heard that cliche until waking up in 2011 in a world bombarded with sex. The _Sports Illustrated_ swimsuit issue proudly displayed images racier than the ones passed around by his fellow soldiers in 1944. Ten-year-old boys picked it up and thumbed through it in the grocery store.

And then one of his first friends in this technicolor present had been Natasha Romanoff, lithe and deadly and beautiful. You could not miss the fawning, winking public in awe of her. When The Avengers became a household name, she had not only been a poster above little girls’ beds but also the sexy backsplash for many bars.

He had never liked that.

In the years after the snap, an era he began to define on its own, separate and distinct from all other parts of life, they had once gone to the beach. Cape Cod had been empty, and they had been quiet, crowded by all the empty space around them that should have been friends, family. He swam in the cold chop under the cloudy sky, stretching himself to his own limits of depth and breath, and after one long, dizzying plunge, he came up with a gasp.

He remembered what she looked like then, standing on the edge of a rocky outcropping, as clearly as if he had a photograph at his disposal. Her back ramrod straight, her wetsuit unzipped to her waist, her braid plastered to her neck, she stared at the dark clouds promising a coming storm. Inevitably, his eyes had gone to the scar tissue along her side, a sign of everything she had endured to stand there like this, the mark of a survivor.

She had been stunning. He remembered thinking she was the most beautiful thing left on the planet.

But it’s funny how we never escape the things that make us.

To him, the prettiest girls wore victory rolls and nylons and bounced down the sidewalks of Brooklyn, too beautiful for little Steve to dare approach.

And one day, only a few days into their fledgling life here in 1945, Natasha had thrown open the apartment door and struck a pose in the doorframe, hands wide and face alight.

“Natalie Johnson, right?”

His heart had skipped a beat in his chest. Natasha’s two-toned hair was all shiny red again, curled softly around her face, a twist pinned back from her face, and a navy blue shirtwaist dress showed off her figure without showing an inch of skin. But somehow it was the cherry red lips that did him in.

He actually stammered. “You… look the part.”

He had to busy himself with fixing the icebox to stop from staring at her. Even then, he turned more often than he wanted to catch sight of her, one detail at a time: a flounce of slip lace, a curl loose and free dangling beside her nose, the nylon seam marching up the back of her lean leg before disappearing beneath her skirt.

The sweat beads on his upper lip had nothing to do with the temperature in the apartment. He poured himself a glass of water.

With every sip, he swallowed all the things he was tempted to say.

  
  


 

 

_Sound_

 

“You don’t exactly sing along to the radio yourself, Cap.”

Brooklyn had several self-service laundromats. This one -- Wash-a-Teria -- stayed open 24 hours a day for three days a week, a strange business model in any era. But Steve and Natasha had found it to be their favorite. One other facility was closer; its conventional hours meant it was full of crying babies and heckled mothers. Wash-a-Teria had older machines, slower dryers, ugly brown linoleum, and a radio playing a Top Hits station at all hours.

“But I could,” Steve continued as they tossed their second load of laundry into the machine. “That’s the point I’m making.”

“You’ll feel better about us being here if I learn the words to songs on the radio?”

“I’ll feel better about you being here,” he corrected.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Probably.” He put in a nickel to start the machine. “But you used to listen to music a lot. You always wore headphones when you went running.”

“Maybe I just liked people not talking to me.”

He wished for better words to explain what he meant, how he knew exactly what she was experiencing. The world around you thrums and hums and sings to its own soundtrack, one everyone just knows. Familiar songs blow in the wind and sneak in your windows and tap your toes without you even noticing. But when you’re out of time, when you’re a stranger in a land you no longer know, you experience a different kind of silence, one where the sounds around you mean nothing to you, only to you.

Sam Wilson had recognized that void in Steve once upon a time, blasting Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man” until its smooth licks became shared experience. Sam had played Marvin Gaye and Wu-Tang-Clan and The Notorious B.I.G. and Billy Joel.

Steve smiled at the memory of “Piano Man” coming on during an advertisement and him turning to Tony, grinning.

“This is Billy Joel,” Steve had said proudly.

“Yeah?” Tony had been unimpressed.

But it had meant something intangible to Steve. The silence became soundtrack once more.

“I wonder...” he murmured. He poked around the radio over by the windowsill.

“What?”

“I’m going to cut it up.”

Natasha chuckled, sat on top of the washing machine with a magazine. She crossed her ankles and began to read. He flicked the knobs but found that most late-night fare right now was replays of old radio shows. Finally, he settled back on the original station.

The quiet murmur of familiar tunes made an easy background for reading Erich Maria Remarque and folding underwear.

They were on their way out the door, baskets of clean clothes under their arms, when Natasha stopped in her tracks. He almost bumped into her.

“Do you know this song?” She asked. He tilted his head to listen.

“Of course.”

Dooley Wilson’s “As Time Goes By” trickled from the crackling speakers. She turned around to face him, her eyes bright, her mouth curved in a soft, inviting smile.

“Me too.”

“This song was in _Casablanca_. That was a hit in 1942.” His voice softened. “Bucky and I saw it before we shipped out.”

“This movie’s a classic. I don’t remember when I first saw it but...” she shrugged.

“It’s good to hear it again, isn’t it?”

She tucked her free arm through his free arm, rested her head against his shoulder for a moment. They stood together, and for two minutes, they only listened. Natasha let go first when the final notes of the song trickled away.

“‘I think this is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship,’” she quipped.

“‘Here’s looking at you, kid.’”

He held the door for her as they headed for home.

  
  
  


 

_Smell_

 

At ten o’clock at night on a Monday, Natasha walked into the bathroom while Steve was brushing his teeth.

“Do you know what this is?” She held up a little blue jar, but before Steve could read it, she announced it. “Noxzema.”

Her tone suggested he should be surprised. He spat and straightened back up. “What is that?”

“It’s face wash. The face wash I usually use. Apparently, it has been around since 1914. It’s older than you.”

He made a face. “Funny.”

“I try.” She bumped him sideways to make room for herself at the sink as well. They looked at the mirror versions of one another. He wiped the back of his mouth with the hand towel. “Molly had two jars, so she gave me one to try.”

He didn’t point out that she had clearly already tried it.

“Do you know that the Noxzema Girl ads were translated in Russian? I saw them when I was a little girl.” The sudden change in her voice, its husky dip into sadness, made him frown too. He weighed his options against the moment. Make for levity with a careful joke or ask a question to release pressure lurking beneath something old and painful? He opted for neither.

“I didn’t know.”

“Of course.” She shrugged her shoulder, pinched her mouth tight at the corners. “That was a different time. Before I was KGB. Or S.H.I.E.L.D. Or Avenger. Just a little girl who, like all little girls, just wanted to be pretty.”

Steve tried to refrain, tried to catch the words before they exploded from him in complete honesty.

“That little girl got her wish then. You’re beautiful,” he said. In the mirror, he saw her face turn away to look straight up at him. There was no hiding the sincerity he had just laid bare, but he tried now for the joke. “An excellent advertisement for that face wash.”

She turned back toward the mirror, smile quirking. “You’re a pretty good advertisement for ice baths.”

“That’s the best you’ve got?”

“I had to think on my feet.” She twisted open the top to the jar. He peeked at the stuff inside, thick, white cream that curled when she dragged a finger through it. She applied it to her face in circles. The swirl of her fingerprints was left behind in a glob at her temple. He watched, suspended between interest and mild horror.

Then it hit him. He wrinkled his nose.

“Is it supposed to smell like that?”

She laughed. “It’s iconic.”

If its creators had left Eucalyptus leaves, camphor, and six kinds of rancid liquid cold medicine together to rot in a jar together, it might have smelled half as bad as the actual product she was slathering on her face.

“Will you still smell like that when you come to bed?”

“I doubt it. I’m going to wash it off.”

Water, though, did not seem to have the power to neutralize this particular odor. Steve caught another whiff of it as she pulled back the covers and crawled under.

“You going to wash with that every night?”

“Yup.”

“I think I might have to go back to sleeping on the couch.”

“It’s a free country,” she teased.

He would never admit it to her -- in fact, ribbing her to the contrary became a favorite joke -- but once he got used to it, the smell made him smile. It became the comforting indicator that Natasha was home, safe, and coming to bed.

That didn’t stop him from bringing home other face washes at least once a week and leaving them on the counter. Just in case.

  
  


 

_Taste_

 

Steve finally went to visit Natasha at the VA. She had been working there as a desk clerk at first, but within weeks, she had gotten herself a clipboard and some semblance of authority that made no sense for her job title.

“I can get in anywhere,” she had told him with a wink.

It was amazing how alike a VA facility could be, regardless of year or war. The hallways, stark and antiseptic, tried too hard to reassure every person who walked down them: _You’re safe. This is normal. You’re okay._ He looked down at his civilian clothes just to double-check that he was not Steve Rogers, veteran returned from the big war looking for a little salvation. While he was at it, he pulled his baseball cap low over his brow and instinctively checked his chin for beard cover.

No Captain America here. Nothing to see. Just an ordinary man.

He wondered why, all of a sudden, the idea made him a little sad.

He made eye contact with a passing orderly. “Excuse me. I’m looking for Natalie Johnson. Could you tell me where she is?”

“Sure. Nat’s having lunch before group sessions. She’s in on a lot of those now.”

“Of course she is.” Steve smiled to himself. “Point the way?”

He followed the directions to a dingy break room where Natasha Romanoff had a block of cheese, a hunk of bread, and a bowl in front of her: their abysmal cooking skills laid out in a single image.

“Hey.” She kicked out the chair next to her for him, and he took a seat. “You finally decide to help out around here?”

“No.” He picked up the bread with a questioning look. She nodded, so he pulled off a hunk and ate it. “That’s stale.”

“Very.”

He peeked in the bowl. “Is that strawberry ice cream?”

“Thank goodness for the VA cafeteria,” she said, scooting the bowl closer so its ownership was clear.

“When was the last time you ate a vegetable?”

“It’s been a while.”

He considered it. His last vegetable had been a soggy bowl of canned peas about a week ago.

“That’s it. We have to learn to cook,” he said.

And they did. They started grocery shopping together and grimacing at the odd, flamboyant recipes in books checked out of the public library. Apparently, Natasha’s one-time attempt at suspending their meat and vegetables in gelatin had been very trendy.

At first, the meals they created were simple, serviceable, but clumsy. They dirtied every dish in the house to roast a chicken.

One night, they had stood together at the kitchen counter for two hours taking on basic tasks like chopping an onion and julienning potatoes, elbows bumping and hands fumbling.

Another night they burnt the outside of their meatloaf to char while the inside still bled, and they had to drag themselves upstairs to ask Molly if she had bread and cheese for emergency sandwiches.

They almost gave up when Steve Rogers, who had battled on Earth and in space, had fought monsters and aliens and Nazis, nearly chopped his finger off dicing tomatoes and they had to throw out a whole batch of spaghetti sauce tainted with his blood.

Experience is the best master, though, and after she had been served well, she taught them to cook.

Eventually, they got faster, smarter, able to intuit how ingredients could become meals. From there, they got adventurous, turning up with spices from the Asian Market on the other side of Brooklyn or cranberries for a pork glaze.

They were at the table enjoying homemade egg rolls one night when Natasha paused to look around the apartment. She turned her gaze on him.

“We’re so normal,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We’re so normal it’s weird.”

“Maybe a little.”

He treasured that a little too much, the look of contentment on her face, that little quirk of a smile. He felt like he had done something right.

  
  


 

_Touch_

 

Tony tossed Morgan in the air, threw her straight up. “Like this?”

“I want to _fly._ ” Her voice lost its ferocity in the fit of giggles.

“Someday.” Tony tucked her in closer against his chest. The sprawling green yard had picnic tables and balloons, a dramatic, huge cake and a table loaded with cookout food. Steve looked around him, at the people: Natasha showing the kids how to aim a slingshot while Clint and Laura stole a kiss by the big oak tree, Bucky and Sam arguing fiercely over a hand of Go Fish with Peter Parker, and Bruce sketching some crazy idea on a napkin for Scott.

When he looked back to Tony, Steve saw the reflection of fire and carnage there.

He woke up slowly, not startled awake but gradually nudged from the dream world where everyone now lived for him. Eyelids pressed shut, he clung as long as he could, but their faces faded away slowly, blurring into watercolor before vanishing. Finally, even the warm happiness disappeared.

Steve opened his eyes to the cold dark of the bedroom. In only an instant, the crushing wave of loss made him close them again.

He got up quietly and made his way to the window. Brooklyn winked at him, an array of soft city lights and the occasional passerby. He leaned against the window frame, wishing for things he could not put a name to, wishing for a world where the wars that had brought them all together could never have torn them all apart.

The thoughts weighed so heavy, he could not hear the light tread of Natasha joining him.

“Want to talk about it?”

“It’s nothing new.”

“Which one this time?”

He knew what she meant. “Good dream. Just a cookout and sunshine. Everybody just fine.”

“Y’know, some of that is probably happening right now,” she said. He turned to her before the old argument could find its way back, but she shook her head, reading him as easily as always.  “They might miss us and Tony,” her voice bobbled there, “but I bet Bruce is manning the grill.”

“I bet he’s lousy at it.”

“He’ll get so frustrated he’ll have to invent a whole new automatic grilling system.”

“Not everyone can cook like us.” They shared a smile that faded out as quickly as it had come. All the absences filled the room, but it was Tony’s that stole his smile. Perhaps Steve should have tried harder, should have risked more. Filled with Super-Serum, perhaps he could have wielded Mjolnir and the Infinity Gauntlet successfully. If not, he would have died trying so that Tony might live.

Perhaps he should have gone for Tony in some past time and snatched him forward. Perhaps he should have asked the Soul Stone for the father and husband in place of the woman who made her choice.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Steve finally said. She nodded.

“Then don’t.”

She took his hand. In the breadth of his, her fingers seemed small, deceptively fragile. They stood there together, only their hands touching, their heartbeats thumping through their palms. For two people who lived their lives together in one small apartment with one simple bed, they touched too rarely.

They had always touched that way as if relying on instinct’s promise that touch would take them places they had not yet decided to go.

Steve released her hand and wrapped his arm around her shoulders instead, pulled her against his side.

“I’m glad you’re here, Romanoff.”

“Back at you, Rogers.”

When they finally went to bed again, another piece of the invisible barriers between them had shifted. The center of the bed, an unspoken no man’s land, no longer mattered. He tossed an arm over her as they lay there. She rolled over against his side.

In the simple comfort of one another’s touch, they drifted back to sleep together. Steve had more dreams -- some good, some bad -- but when he woke up, Natasha was there, hair tickling his nose, feet tucked between his, and everything was alright.

**Author's Note:**

> If you wouldn't mind, I'd love to know which of the sections (Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste, or Touch) was your favorite or which was your least favorite. You don't have to tell me why unless you're feeling like it! But it would be handy feedback for me to know which ones of these "went best," so to speak. Thanks!


End file.
